The Garden at Buckingham Palace by Jane Brown

"What a dangerous colour! If you lay on the lawn, people might trample all over you." The lawn in question was that of Buckingham Place at a garden party for debutantes in 1950, and the comment — from a snake-like fellow deb — was directed towards my violent lime-green silk dress, material from Jacqmar (I wanted to wear baby blue, but my exquisite mother persuaded me I was too tall).

More than 50 years later, reading The Garden at Buckingham Palace by Jane Brown and, above all, looking at the sumptuous photographs by Christopher Simon Sykes, I feel honoured by absolutely any connection to that fabulous lawn — the main one is five acres of "the greenest and most beautiful grass in the world", colonised for generations by camomile.